Time Warner Cable “a good ISP for copyright infringers”

If you're wearing an eyepatch as you read this, pay attention: Time Warner Cable is the ISP for you. According to lawyers currently suing thousands of P2P users in federal court, TWC "is a good ISP for copyright infringers."

The outrageous behavior that provoked this claim? TWC's unwillingness to process in a timely manner hundreds or thousands of subscriber subpoenas sent from the law firm of Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver.

That firm, now billing itself as the US Copyright Group, has filed thousands of "John Doe" lawsuits on behalf of indie film producers, including the backers of Far Cry and The Hurt Locker. ISPs don't enjoy processing this many subpoenas to match IP addresses with subscriber names, so companies like Comcast and Verizon have worked out their own compliance deals with Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver.

Not TWC. "Copyright cases involving third-party discovery of Internet service providers have typically related to a plaintiff's efforts to identify anonymous defendants whose numbers rank in the single or low double digits," the cable company told a federal judge earlier this month. "By contrast, plaintiff in this case alone seeks identifying information about 2,049 anonymous defendants, and seeks identifying information about 809 Internet Protocol addresses from TWC."

It continued: "If the Court compels TWC to answer all of these lookup requests given its current staffing, it would take TWC nearly three months of full-time work by TWC's Subpoena Compliance group, and TWC would not be able to respond to any other request, emergency or otherwise, from law enforcement during this period. TWC has a six-month retention period for its IP lookup logs, and by the time TWC could turn to law enforcement requests, many of these requests could not be answered."

TWC claimed to have spare lookup capacity for only 28 of these subpoenas each month—a rate at which it would take more than two years to get through them all. And that's just for the Far Cry case; TWC faces numerous other subpoenas from other cases involving other films.

Standing up for pirates?

Tom Dunlap, the lead lawyer on the case for his firm, last week filed a brief with the judge in which he absolutely trashed TWC's stance, and its motivations.

Thomas Dunlap

"TWC highlights the fact that it is not a party to this case," he wrote, "but it appears that TWC is utilizing that fact to garner public support for its position and possibly in an attempt to gain more subscribers who would value TWC's efforts to protect the privacy of demonstrated copyright infringers. To the extent TWC’s tactics are just that—letting the public know that TWC is a good ISP for copyright infringers because TWC will fight any subpoenas related to infringers’ activities—TWC exposes itself to a claim for contributory copyright infringement."

This certainly ups the ante—the clear implication is that TWC might find itself on the receiving end of a separate lawsuit alleging contributory copyright infringement. Dunlap cited the Grokster case, which went all the way to the Supreme Court and ended with a Grokster loss (and shutdown).

The complaint doesn't let up on the charge that TWC's resistance to these mass subpoenas is just about providing aid and comfort to its piratically minded customers. "TWC’s tactics show that it is more intent on trying to avoid compliance, while currying favor with its subscribers and potential subscribers," wrote Dunlap.

Dunlap clearly enjoys administering a good beatdown both inside and outside the courthouse; his bio notes that he plays rugby, has "US Army Humvee and M1 Tank drivers licenses," and in 2002 was a "National Silver Medallist in full contact Burmese kickboxing, called Bando."